Chapter 168: His Muted Screams

Raziel stared at the ten elite Inquisitors stepping over the ruined iron door of the workshop.

The executioners wore heavy silver breastplates over crimson robes.

They held long steel halberds and formed a tight wedge inside the small room.

They bypassed the brawl in the courtyard and marched straight down into the dark to eliminate the source of the shield.

Zorya sat in the wooden chair right behind Raziel.

She slammed her hands against the stone slate and squeezed her silver eyes shut.

She could not break her concentration to draw an offensive rune, and she lacked the physical strength to fight ten armored veterans.

Raziel tightened his grip on his iron dagger with his free right hand.

He needed to hold the connection to the floor, but he also needed to kill the guards before they butchered the Inscriptor.

He activated the Umbral Paragon core.

The gold holy light and the black Shadow Parasite twisted together inside his chest.

He pushed the corrupted magic straight into his legs and forced his exhausted muscles to move.

He ripped his bleeding left arm off the floor.

Zorya screamed as the sudden loss of the anchor hit her mana channels, but Raziel did not have a choice.

He needed three seconds to clear the room.

He lunged forward before the Inquisitors could swing their heavy weapons in the tight space.

He slammed his body into the vanguard guard and drove his iron dagger straight up under the man’s silver chin guard.

CRUNCH.

The iron blade punched through the soft tissue of the throat.

Hot blood sprayed across Raziel’s face. The guard dropped his halberd and grabbed his neck.

Raziel did not stop moving.

He ripped the dagger out and grabbed the falling halberd with his bloody left hand. He spun the heavy wooden shaft around and smashed the blunt end into the side of the second guard’s helmet.

The kinetic impact dented the steel and knocked the man unconscious against the brick wall.

The remaining eight guards broke their wedge formation.

They raised their weapons to engage the anomaly.

Raziel dropped his iron dagger and grabbed the halberd with both hands.

He swung the heavy blade of the halberd in a wide, brutal arc.

The steel edge bit deep into the unarmored leg of the third guard. The man screamed and collapsed onto his knees.

Raziel reversed his grip and drove the wooden butt of the weapon straight into the guard’s face, crushing his nose and silencing the scream.

He ducked under a thrust from the fourth guard and stepped entirely inside the man’s reach.

He activated the Devourer and grabbed the center of the silver breastplate.

VMMMM!

He ripped the holy kinetic energy right out of the armor’s defensive shield.

The blue light died instantly.

Raziel pulled the raw magic into his own core, compressed it, and shoved it back into the metal with devastating force.

BOOM!

The breastplate shattered into jagged shrapnel.

The kinetic blast threw the fourth and fifth guards backward into the stone corridor outside the workshop.

Raziel stood in the center of the bloody room.

He breathed hard and spat red blood onto the dusty tiles.

He killed five elite executioners in less than ten seconds using a stolen weapon and a corrupted soul.

He threw the halberd onto the floor and dropped back onto his knees.

He slammed his bleeding left arm flat against the shattered bricks again and re-established the Anchor Blood connection.

“Take it!” Raziel yelled at Zorya.

Zorya gasped and arched her back in the wooden chair.

The massive surge of raw power hit her mana channels again and forced her silver eyes wide open.

She slammed her palms harder against the stone slate and pushed the architectural magic back out of the courtyard to hold the line against the red digital static.

Up on the surface, the siege escalated.

Lucian and Gideon fought the remaining vanguard in the dirt of the main courtyard.

The noble deflected a broadsword strike with his steel dagger and kicked the guard in the knee.

Gideon swung his heavy iron mace and crushed a silver helmet.

They held the line and kept the enemy away from the administrative doors.

But Elector Mordecai lost his patience.

The supreme commander of the Inquisition stood on the dirt road outside the perimeter. He tapped his crystal cane against the black Silencer artifact.

The sub-audible frequency chewed through the physical dirt and the trees, leaving massive unrendered gray voids in the earth.

Mordecai realized the shield would not fall.

The novices in the basement possessed enough raw power to sustain the architectural defense indefinitely.

The Elector adjusted his pristine white robes and gripped his cane tight.

He stepped away from the black sphere and walked directly toward the main gates of St. Celeste.

He did not wait for the deletion code to eat the iron bars.

He walked straight through the heavy iron gates.

The air around Mordecai distorted and warped as he moved.

His physical body glitched and jumped forward in jagged, unnatural movements. It looked like severe server lag in a broken video game.

He skipped three feet of physical space in a fraction of a second and materialized inside the main courtyard.

He bypassed the physical barrier completely.

Lucian and Gideon stopped fighting the guards and stared at the Elector.

Mordecai stood on the grass inside the academy walls. He looked up at the tall stone towers of the residential wing.

Hundreds of first-year and second-year novices crammed into the dormitory windows.

They watched the bloody battle in the courtyard and they watched the gray voids eating the perimeter walls.

The novices started to panic.

The sheer horror of the deletion magic broke their discipline.

They screamed at the top of their lungs. The high-pitched noise of terrified children echoed across the academy grounds.

Mordecai frowned. He looked at the screaming novices in the windows and tightened his grip on his crystal cane.

The noise annoyed him.

The Elector raised his bare left hand and pointed his open palm toward the residential wing.

He snapped his fingers.

CLICK.

The audio channels of the entire residential wing ceased to exist.

Mordecai deleted the sound.

The screaming stopped instantly. Total, suffocating silence dropped over the dormitories like a heavy blanket.

The novices in the windows did not stop screaming.

They kept their mouths wide open.Their chests heaved as they pushed air through their vocal cords.

They cried and yelled and begged for help.

But absolutely zero sound came out.

The physical action of screaming remained, but the result vanished. Mordecai erased the audio data from the game board.

Lucian stared at the silent, screaming children in the windows.

The noble dropped his steel dagger onto the grass. His hands shook and he took a step backward.

He possessed the courage to fight heavily armored veterans and he possessed the stealth to cut throats in the dark.

He did not possess the psychological resilience to fight a man who snapped his fingers and deleted human voices.

Mordecai lowered his hand and turned his head.

He looked at Lucian and Gideon standing near the administrative doors.

The Elector smiled his thin, cruel smile.

“You fight with blades and iron,” Mordecai stated. “You fight for a rotting temple.”

Mordecai raised his left hand again and pointed his palm straight at Lucian’s chest.

“I fight for the code.”

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